Practical Steps toward Computational Unification: Helpful Perspectives for New Systems, Adding Functionality to Existing Ones

Details Practical Steps toward Computational Unification: Helpful Perspectives for New Systems, Adding Functionality to Existing Ones Practical Steps toward Computational Unification: Helpful Perspectives for New Systems, Adding Functionality to Existing Ones

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmin51a0313t&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #IN51A-0313

Statistics

Computation

0430 Computational Methods And Data Processing, 0520 Data Analysis: Algorithms And Implementation, 6339 System Design, 6344 System Operation And Management, 9820 Techniques Applicable In Three Or More Fields

Scientific paper

With ever increasing amounts of Earth-Science funding being diverted to the war in Iraq, the Earth-Science community must now more than ever wring every bit of utility out of every dollar. We're not likely to get funded any projects perceived by others as "pie in the sky", so we have to look at already funded programs within our community and directing new programs in a unifying direction. We have not yet begun the transition to a computationally unifying, general-purpose Earth Science computing paradigm, though it was proposed at the Fall 2002 AGU meeting in San Francisco, and perhaps earlier. Encouragingly, we do see a recognition that more commonality is needed as various projects have as funded goals the addition of the processing and dissemination of new datatypes, or data-sets, if you prefer, to their existing repertoires. Unfortunately, the timelines projected for adding a datatype to an existing system are typically estimated at around two years each. Further, many organizations have the perception that they can only use their dollars to support exclusively their own needs as they don't have the money to support the goals of others, thus overlooking opportunities to satisfy their own needs while at the same time aiding the creation of a global GeoScience cyber-infrastructure. While Computational Unification appears to be an unfunded, impossible dream, at least for now, individual projects can take steps that are compatible with a unified community and can help build one over time. This session explores these opportunities. The author will discuss the issues surrounding this topic, outlining alternative perspectives on the points of difficulty, and proposing straight-forward solutions which every Earth Science data processing system should consider. Sub-topics include distributed meta-data, distributed processing, distributed data objects, interdisciplinary concerns, and scientific defensibility with an overall emphasis on how previously written processes and functions may be integrated into a system efficiently, with minimal effort, and with an eye toward an eventual Computational Unification of the Earth Sciences. A fundamental to such systems is meta-data which describe not only the content of data but also how intricate relationships are represented and used to good advantage. Retrieval techniques will be discussed including trade-offs in using externally managed meta-data versus embedded meta-data, how the two may be integrated, and how "simplifying assumptions" may or may not actually be helpful. The perspectives presented in this talk or poster session are based upon the experience of the Sequoia 2000 and BigSur research projects at the University of California, Berkeley, which sought to unify NASA's Mission To Planet Earth's EOS-DIS, and on-going experience developed by Science Tools corporation, of which the author is a principal. NOTE: These ideas are most easily shared in the form of a talk, and we suspect that this session will generate a lot of interest. We would therefore prefer to have this session accepted as a talk as opposed to a poster session.

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